


Out Of Darkness

by Menoetius



Category: Silent Witness (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Death Fix, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-07
Updated: 2014-10-07
Packaged: 2018-02-20 05:30:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2416640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Menoetius/pseuds/Menoetius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's far from the first time one of them has woken the other up screaming."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out Of Darkness

**Author's Note:**

> A short and fluffy and utterly unapologetic fix-it for Series 15, particularly but not limited to Greater Love.
> 
> Title from John Ireland's anthem Greater Love Hath No Man.

Leo will be sleeping the sleep of the just and weary when what Harry calls his lizard brain becomes aware that all is not well. He’ll swim out of unconsciousness in time to hear uncoordinated footsteps stumbling away, the bathroom light snapping on, the sound of someone’s stomach contents emptying into the toilet. His hand will touch the sheets next to him, clammy with cold and not yet dried sweat. His face will twist into a grimace. He’d said that the prawn sandwich was a bad idea.

He’ll turn on the bedside lamp, ready to throw on a bathrobe, to offer ginger ale and an emergency wastepaper basket and sympathy.

But then the dim thread of light from the bathroom will go out and Harry will slip back inside, and he’ll be sheet white, paler than he should be from food poisoning, and looking hunted about the eyes.

Not the prawns, then.

Leo will reach for him, kiss him on the corner of the mouth, taste Colgate.

“OK?” he’ll ask carefully.

Harry will make a noise halfway between a choke and a sob, and he’ll drop to the mattress like a stone as he reels Leo back in, offering kisses that are open-mouthed and sloppy and desperate. He’ll pin Leo to the bed, fitting their bodies together and reaching between them, and Leo will let him, will kiss back and fumble for the lube and grow obligingly hard in Harry’s hand.

_“I love you,”_ Harry will say, gasp, hot and damp, face buried in Leo’s shoulder. 

“Nightmare?” Leo will ask, after, when he’s cleaned them off and climbed back into bed behind Harry, made himself into the big spoon, and tangled their feet together and hooked his chin over Harry’s shoulder.

It’s far from the first time one of them has woken the other up screaming.

Later, as they fall back to sleep, they might drift to their separate sides of the bed. 

Or they might not.

They aren’t co-dependent, whatever Nikki might sometimes say, but they’ve both lost too much and too often almost lost each other. For months after Amsterdam, Leo behaved like a duvet with separation anxiety. In the week leading up to Cassie’s birthday, every year, Harry rolls a bit closer, an arm thrown over Leo’s hip, anchoring him. If one of them comes home from a bad case, the other dozes, one ear still open for when the nightmares come. They’ve seen things that would have Special Forces soldiers turning on all the lights. It isn’t co-dependence, but they’re better together.

Harry will take a thin breath. A shuttered picture of sand and khaki and an IED will flash behind his eyes.

“You were dead,” he’ll say.


End file.
